Fun at The Lone Pine Film Festival

On a cold and windy weekend, film fans flocked to Lone Pine for the 19th annual Lone Pine Film Festival.

The Festival was packed all day with people viewing the exhibits, talking to the John Wayne impersonator, and watching films. Lots headed to the Film Museum.

Bus tours to the many locations where the films were shot ran all weekend. Tour guides lined up photos of the movies with their locations all over the hills. The sheer number of westerns shot in the relatively small area of the Alabama Hills allows for short walks from the bus to an abundance of scene locations.

Being a Western themed film festival, many of those who attended were decked out in full Western regalia. Many carried side arms that would occasionally lead to an outburst of fake gun violence as the protagonists shot at each other with blank-filled six shooters.

It hasnt always been Westerns in Lone Pine. Science Fiction movies like the classic Tremors, and now Ironman,” have been filmed in the Alabama Hills and beyond. This summer, crews shot scenes for another sci-fi movie, Transformers II, in the area.

Science fiction continues, but crews have come to Lone Pine to shoot westerns since the beginning of the Big Screen. A packed audience gathered for two silent films made in the 1920s. To the live organ accompanist, highlights of the action include a wild stage coach ride down an unpaved Tuttle Creek Road in the movie Rider of the Pass.

Between the films, the panel discussions, the tours and just spending the weekend in Lone Pine many left the 19th annual Lone Pine Film Festival planning a return for the 20th.